Musical chairs was a staple of birthday parties of my childhood; I haven't seen it around lately, though. The game was both exciting and dreadful. Dreadful, because it taps into children's fears of being left out. Exciting, because of the possibility of winning, of course, and in musical chairs, you inevitably sat on someone else, to great hilarity. Jacobsen even uses the term "scary fun" to describe the action. The poem moves on from the game, and focuses on the sea, contrasting its constant rhythms with the children's one brief moment, "the fact of being eight." Jacobsen writes,

Onto the pitted sand comes highwater mark.Waves older than eight begin a retreat;they will come, the children gone, the slope dark.

Even though it's about a celebration, Jacobsen's poem is bittersweet, and definitely told from a grown-up's point of view, not a child's. I know the perfect image to go with it: a photograph by Tina Barney of a children's party at the beach. When I first saw the large-format picture, it took me a while to realize that the camera's focus was not on the kids, but on the adults behind them, cocktails in hand—and one step closer to the sea, now that I think about it.

Around the children's literature blogs, you'll find more poetry talk today. The roundup of posts is over at a wrung sponge.

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I absolutely hated musical chairs -- the sheer terror of being without a chair was always taken far too literally by me, and someone usually ended up weeping when we played. This poem is definitely bittersweet, but lovely.

Jeez, I hated musical chairs, too! It was just too much stress. "It's always funny until someone gets hurt" usually seemed to be the prevailing motto...

I just got a copy of the "New Oxford Book of American Verse"--I wonder which is the newer version? I'm looking forward to browsing it, in any case. I used to have an Oxford Book of Nursery Rhymes as a kid that I adored.